Need Help Finding my next working laptop or finding a solution for the current one

[ToaJannox]

Hi everyone, I am a student in my second and last year of Master Computer  Science  Degree with a Computer Graphics and Sounds speciality. I came here with the hope to find some advices or ideas in order to find my next laptop or maybe show me another way to my problem.

 

As I stated I study Computer Graphics and Sound, which mean I work on:

• Image Processing
• 3D Graphics (engines, image synthesis, raytracing )
• Sound and Music Processing
• Some IA/Machine Learning

 

So I'm working with quite resources needy stuff.

 

Right now I have a MSI GE62 7RE Apache Pro(rev 1.0) with the base following specs:

• OS:
  •   Linux (Mint 20 Cinnamon)
  •   Windows 10 Home   
• CPU : Intel I7-770HQ (4 cores at 2.800GHz)
• GPU: nVidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti (mobile) 4GB of video memory
• RAM:  8GB  -  DDR4-2400
• Storage:
  • 1x M.2 SSD Combo (NVMe PCIe Gen3 / SATA ) SSD (approx 125GB not sure on that )
  • 1x 2.5" SATA HDD HDD (1TB)

I added an additional 2TB HDD drive by replacing the optical drive. I mainly use Linux daily for work mainly (although I also browse the net and I barely play on it)

 

Good points:

• I love the keypress
• Screen is good
• I/O is fantastic:
  • 1x Ethernet
  • 1x HDMI
  • 1x USB-C
  • 1x USB-A
  • 2x USB3.0
  • Mini-display port
  • SD card reader
  • Audio Jack In
  • Audio Jack out

I bought it in 2018 for quite a reasonable price (it was in promotion) but there are some issues that on a daily basis are becoming more and more hard to deal with

 

1 - The battery life is horrendous

This one might be a problem related to Linux having sometime  a mitigated support regarding nVidia cards driver however I've read on many instance that MSI laptop are know to have a bad battery life.

But I can't afford having less than 1 hour of battery life while working on lightweight programming or even web-browsing. My laptop is almost always plugged-in even though I pay attention not to left it plugged all the time so I don't damage the battery life even more

 

2 - The keyboard layout

As I currently reside in France, I have an AZERTY layout. But some keys are ridiculously placed, especially for programming.
- the '<' and '>' keys are directly next to the 'ALT GR' which combined with how braces,brackets and parentheses inputs are working on a AZERTY layout often leave me typing nonsense.
- in order to acces 'HOME' or 'END' I have to use the 'Fn+PGUP' or 'Fn+PGDWN' combos

- 'DEL' , 'INS', 'PGUP' and 'PGDWN' are located juste above the numpad and they are just soooo small
 

3 -It get's toasty

 

This laptop always had cooling issue, it would get hot even while idling. It's hot during winter, and outright burning my left wrist during summer.

Out of fear of having heat related damage I had to buy one of those laptop cooling pad (the platform thing with fan inside) -> It takes a lot of space and can't envision to travel around with it in my bag

It comes with a functionality that allows me to crank the fan to the maximum by a simple button press -> the noise is horrible, especially during class.

Cooling is quite a spiny issue during summer, but brining along the cooling pad during class is just impossible because of the size and fan boosting is okay but not too long because of the noise

 

Otherwise I'm quite happy with it I can do all I need, for now at least but I'm growing more and more tired of all the drawback I've evoked.

 

That's why I've began searching for a new laptop but I don't really know for what I should go.
 

What I know is the following:

- I need a decent GPU for 3D and GPU accelerated computation. Nvidia  might be more indicated  I think. I don't know anything about AMD GPUs.
- I don't really care about the CPU manufacturer, but AMD seems to be more and more promising (even if I heard here and there that Linux have some issues if AMD it seems?)

- I would prefer separate audio in/out ports

- Ethernet port

- Better Storage solutions, I currently have 3 drive, two of them are HDD, not quite ideal

- A better keyboard configuration, although the AZERTY layout might introduce  some irregularities compared to QWERTY layout I just don't want to have weird key positions like having '<' or '>' being between the space bar and alt gr. I don't really mind if there is a numpad or not, I'll adapt

- I know how to get around simple problems related to Linux and I'm patient enough to take the time to fix them, but I need a machine where hardware and software won't clash against each other

 

This is not urgent per se, my current laptop will certainly carry me long enough to finish my studies, but once on the job market, I think it won't be sufficient enough.

 

I want to thank anyone in advance for any piece of advice or some recommendations you all might have. If I forgot to add any details that would make my post clearer please do ask for it I'll try to respond to it as clearly as I can. I hope that my english was good enough for you to understand what I'm aiming for

Edit: I forgot to maybe give a price range. I think I would go for a laptop between 1500 to 2000€ (that's roughly between 1775 to 2366USD)

Thank you !

 

Edited November 15, 2020 by ToaJannox